People baffled after discovering weird 'blacked out' island on Google Maps

Google Maps has captured all kinds of weird and wonderful scenes over the years.

From hungover women waiting for takeaways to trippy optical illusions, technology capturing hilarious moments completely by chance never grows old.

Sometimes, however, details on Google Maps can prove to create a bit of a mystery - and no, not just what that hangover lass ordered from Deliveroo.

A load of people online have been absolutely baffled after spotting a strange island that appears to have been completely blacked out, with many joking that they've finally found the remote spot from Lost.

We don't actually know where it is, and it actually appears to technically be an atoll - though we can stick with island if that makes things easier.

The outside of the island seems to show the lighter sea, and even some waves crashing against what are presumably lovely beaches around the outside.

Reddit

However, the centre of the island is completely blacked out, and we know for a fact that Google Maps do sometimes black places out that they don't have access to, or people don't want them to know what's going on there, or just don't like being on Google Maps.

There's also just a chance that it's a quirk of the way that the programme is made. It could be that they just didn't remember to put the middle into it.

We may well never know.

Still, that hasn't stopped the good folks of the internet speculating about it.

One person wrote: "God dropped his guitar pick."

Right, so we can probably rule that theory out.

Another said: "My first thought was that it's censored. It wouldn't make sense for a natural formation to be black like that in such a shallow, small atoll/island."

Hmm, but why would that be the case?

A third - as we teased earlier - said: "Ladies and gentlemen, they have found the Island in Lost."

However, one Reddit user might have found the - admittedly dull - solution to the problem.

Reddit

They said: "OK so the real answer is the blue colour around the island is a painted-in color so the oceans look uniform in the maps.

"Islands are added by erasing some of that blue to let the satellite image show through.

"Sometimes they do a sloppy job. So what you are seeing moving inward is: artificial ocean colour, real ocean with waves, beach, island.

"As for the shape, idk man islands come in all shapes and sizes I don't discriminate".

Well, whatever it is, it looks pretty cool. Let's assume it's some sort of hybrid Lost island/Area 51/pit of despair sort of set-up.